Day. It’s the New Night!

School takes too much time. I seem to have no time for blogging lately… I was planning to post this a few days ago, but school got in the way…

Anyway, almost two weeks ago now, I went to the zoo. This is nothing unusual, my photography club meets there once a month. What WAS unusual, was that I had to be there at EIGHT IN THE MORNING. The zoo is in Omaha. I am in Harlan. That is over an hour away. It’s bad enough that the club meets at nine. That means getting up at seven. This month I had to get up at six. It was awful. I almost died. Not really.

So I get there wondering what this was all about and I find out that we are going to the Kingdoms of the Night exhibit. That’s the nocturnal exhibit underneath the Desert Dome, in case you’ve never been to the Henry Doorly Zoo. Why would we go to the zoo two hours before they open to visit the nocturnal exhibit? Because at eight o’clock the “Sun” hasn’t set yet. All the exhibits were still bright as day. Have you ever been in a cave that is fully lit? I have.

It was so cool to actually be able to take pictures in there. I have hardly ever been able to get good pictures down there.

With almost no lights it is pretty much impossible to take pictures anywhere in any of the nocturnal exhibits, unless you use a flash, and then your pictures look horrible.

The only bad thing about the morning was, as this was the nocturnal exhibit’s “Daytime,” most of the animals were sleeping.

I feel so bad for those Springhaas. I mean, how would you like to share your bed with a porcupine?

Even with the lights on I still didn’t get a very good picture of the giant salamander. This beast is huge and weird looking, but he’s never in a position where I can get a really great photo of him. This is the best I could do.

If you look very close you can see lots of little animals all over this exhibit. All asleep.

This is a Prehensile Tailed Porcupine. I’ll bet most of you didn’t even know there was such a thing. Now you do. :)

This one is for you mom. :p Isn’t he cute? :)

The best part was going through the swamp.

The reason?

I FINALLY got some good pictures of this guy! I have never been able to photograph the white alligator before, but with the lights on it was easy!

I have a few more pictures, but I will save them for my photo blog, and I will try to get them up tonight.

It was fun to photograph the other photographers as well.

After I got to the end I went back to the beginning because I never saw one of my favorite animals, the Aardvarks. And I never saw them even when I went back. They must have either been off display, or they had a really good hiding spot to sleep in. Aardvarks are pretty big, so I know I didn’t just pass them by.

As I went back, the lights started going dim since it was almost 9 in the morning, and the Naked Mole Rat display started to look really cool.

I’ll spare you any photos of the actual animals since they are pretty much the ugliest animal ever to walk the earth. (Rufus the Naked Mole Rat on Kim Possible is an exception, but he doesn’t count since he’s a cartoon) Plus, I never got any clear shots of them, otherwise I probably would post one. :p

Back at the beginning it was “Sunset.” The Springhaas and Brushtail Porcupines were just starting to wake up, but I didn’t have time to take any more pictures. I had to get to the meeting.

And that was my adventure. I took more photos in the jungle after my meeting, but I’m saving those pictures for my photography blog.